Email marketing in 2012 is a fierce competition (and not just with your competitors). Nike competes against Nate The Car Salesman while a mother tries to nudge out Match.com for a little inbox affection. With all of these messages, the once-sacred inbox now moves more like a Twitter feed than a mailman.It's important to understand why one email sells while another travels to Deleted Items with a bold subject line in tow.
Last week, I attended HubSpot's webinar, The Science of Email Marketing. Known as the Social Media Scientist, Dan Zarrella compiled the statistics and presented the webinar. It was one of the more useful webinars I've attended because it gave hard evidence rather less-than-concrete theories.14 Statistics you can apply to your next email campaign
- 80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices
- 12% of people use separate work and personal inboxes
- Over 50% of respondents say they read "most of" their emails
- "Secrets" is the most clicked lead nurturing subject line word
- "Posts" and "Jobs" are the most clicked subject line words
- Click through rate (CTR) is higher when using the recipient's first name in the subject line over no use of the first name
- CTR is higher when using the recipient's company name in the subject line over no company mention
- 88% prefer to receive HTML emails vs. 12% who prefer plain text from companies
- 65% prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text
- Your most recent subscribers are the most likely to click through
- Saturday has the highest CTR at over 9% (Sunday is second just under 9%)
- 6 AM has the highest CTR of any hour
- Most unsubscriptions come on Tuesdays (0.52% unsub rate)
- Clicks by button text: "Click Here" gets the highest % of clicks over "Go" and "Submit"
SEE ALSO: 10 Mobile Statistics You Need to Hear
For more in depth charts, view the webinar slides below. Thank you to HubSpot for compiling these statistics through surveys, customer emails sent, and other data sources. Here are the slides:
The Science of Email Marketing
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Takeaways for Recreation Organizations and Non-Profits
Community organizations typically are trying to get people to volunteer, donate, or participate in the community through recreation programs and events. Even though your emails may have a higher importance or significance than a Victoria's Secret 20% off sale, every organization still has to compete for the same space in the inbox. For your next email, consider segmenting your lists more, personalize the emails, find the right time of day and day of week, and use the right words. Those statistics are all there for you in HubSpot's webinar.However, don't forget to do your own analysis. Your subscriber list may react differently than the people in this data set. So experiment and test! And literally...think outside the box.
SEE ALSO: 8 Steps for Effective Email Campaigns
